Friday, May 8, 2009

Mike Joy Tripleheader Highlights Friday in Darlington

SPEED has another dynamite Friday lined-up for NASCAR fans, this time from Darlington. Beginning at 11AM ET, SPEED will be on the air right up until the start of the Nationwide Series coverage at 7PM on ESPN2.

Mike Joy will be doing ironman duty for SPEED as he calls Sprint Cup Series practice, Nationwide Series qualifying and then wraps the day up with Sprint Cup qualifying. The "big boys" will qualify beginning at 5PM.

Once again Joy will be joined by his NASCAR on Fox booth-mates for the Sprint Cup action, while Hermie Sadler and Jeff Hammond will handle the Nationwide duties.

Don't forget, Fox Sports CEO David Hill will be on the foxsports.com chat page answering your NASCAR TV questions from 3-4PM ET. Questions can be submitted in advance, with the email address listed on the website chat page.

SPEED does a great job with both qualifying and practice coverage. Once again, the ESPN TV team just covers the Nationwide Series race and is then long gone. ESPN2 does manage to sneak-in NASCAR Now at 4:30PM between live sessions.

This post will serve to host your comments on the daytime coverage on SPEED. There will be a new post up to live blog the Nationwide Series race coverage scheduled for 7PM.

To add your TV-related comments to this post, just click on the comments button. This is a family-friendly website, please keep that in mind when posting.

34 comments:

It's supposed to be around 90 degrees there today, based on the forecasts I'm seeing. That could be a storyline.....they'll be practicing in that heat for a race that will be run when it's much cooler tomorrow evening.

Dish has SPEED in HD now??? Hooray! I'm going over my girlfriend's later so that will be a welcomed sight! I'm trying to talk my dad into getting Dish over the DirecTV we have now (I think it's too slow and it loses reception way too much), but the only thing holding me back was the fact that SPEED was not in HD. This changes things.

Lots of Darlington stripes today. Seems like a little more than usual, or maybe it's that it has been a year since we've gone to Darlington.

I happened to catch part of practice earlier and either Mike J or Larry Mc commented that David Gillihan's team had to do a start-and-park last week or the week before so they could afford to come to Darlington.

I know some will disagree, but I enjoyed the shots of who was in the garage - David Pearson, Richard P., Waddell Wilson, and Morgan Shepherd.

So far for filling its been pretty good. Great interview with Pearson. Regan Smith had an excellent shot at S&P. Random Thought... Instead of race attempts how about go by laps run. That way you know who is truly S&P and who is actually trying.

There is debate over the Nationwide series lineup. Jayski has it based on the top 30, then attempts. Nascar.com and Speed had it based on owner points. Either Paul Menard or Mike Harmon will race (Harmon wrecked in practice & unsure if he has a backup car = S&P)

Hey, Dot. You might not miss much since Cup quals are just starting and they had set aside two hours for that. Maybe ESPN Countdown will be a long version and they'll start the race later than 7:30, 7:45.

I have a question. Is the qualifying tape delayed to a certain extent? The reason I'm asking is, I have the qualifying on Speed on my computer via my Slingbox, and I also have on Pit Command from the Nascar.com website. They are at least 5 or six drivers behind on the telecast vs Pit Command.

absolutely, if you're watching the simultaneous "live" speed cup quals and ESPN nationwide coverage, you'll notice the LIVE ESPN coverage has the stand and safety vehincles on the front straight, while Speed has cars on the track, quite a contradiction for simulatenous LIVE events, ah JD, ain't TV fun?

Mike Joy & co. addressed the situation in Talladega where the comment was made that "no debris went in to the stands." Mike went back and clarified his remarks and his reasons behind the original words. Very classy of him :)

I'm not surprised about that. Mike Joy has always been classy and while I was disappointed in his comments after the accident, I knew what he meant and that it wouldn't take long to get an explanation.

I misssed Mike Joy's comments darn it. Went out to get dinner from kitchen I guess.

He is a classy guy and I wondered when he would say something about Dega...wished I would've heard it though...he seems like a real stand up guy. Always liked him..and the others in the booth..except when DW gets on a case. :-)

I've been a fan for about 16 years now, and I had not known this until now. I had no idea they delayed the qualifying sessions for TV. I go to the sessions at Pocono and it always seemed that they would take 2 or 3 minutes which I thought was for a commercial break. I was terribly mistaken.

No problem, NASCAR does not hold qualifying for TV and never has. That would be unfair to the teams.

The cars run in order and TV used to just miss cars in the old days.

SPEED schedules additional time on the end to allow each driver's run to be shown. Adding in the commercial breaks slowly pushes that time back until the TV show ends sometimes 20-30 minutes later than the live qualifying.

As a TV viewer, you would never know or really never need to. You missed nothing and no one lied.

ESPN uses the old school approach of just leaving and missing cars, but they do not start getting involved in qualifying actively until July.

Then, you will hear the screams of NASCAR fans used to seeing all the runs and now missing about every fifth one.

Major thank you to the TV crew for hanging in there through the rain and still providing the Tivo style qualifying format despite the overrun into ESPN's Nationwide pre-race show.

I also appreciate the TV folks opening up on the "dirty little secret" of the start-and-park in recent weeks. Openly discussing this practice on the air can serve two positive purposes from where I sit:

1.) Continuing to mention situations like Joe Nemechek's on the air could actually help attract a sponsor to a team like that who would legitimately like to run the entire distance if they had a little financial help.

2.) Allowing more drivers like Friday's qualifying rainout-fearing Regan Smith to drop soundbites like 'We'd really like to be in the race since we actually plan on racing.' on national TV on a consistent basis might force NASCAR to re-evaluate the potential long-term negative effects of allowing more and more legitimate racers to be sent home in favor of start-and-park cars.

I sure would love to see a Fox microphone put in front of Scott Speed, Jeremy Mayfield, or their sponsors before Saturday night's Cup race so they could be given a chance to discuss their opinions about this practice.